Introductory 

Telehaus Wetter is located in a rural region in the state of Hesse, Germany, near the university town of Marburg. In Wetter, as in other rural towns of the district, there is a lack of qualified jobs particularly for women. In other words, there are not enough jobs which meet the following criteria:

• close to home;
• providing living wages;
• with working-times which allow the possibility to combine job and family-life.

On the other hand there are a lot of highly qualified women living in the region who are looking for work. In many cases, they are unable to accept attractive jobs in Marburg because they have childcare responsibilities and can't stay away from home for the whole day. Public transport is also poor, so people working in Marburg are generally dependent on their own cars to get to and from work. Most families do not have sufficient income to be able to run a second car.

Faced with these difficulties, in 1992 a number of women employed at the office of women's affairs in the Landkreis (district) of Marburg-Biedenkopf came up with idea of using the potential of information and communication technologies. They realised that it should be possible to make use of the decentralising functions of these technologies in order to support women living in the rural areas near Marburg. Technology would carry work to the people, rather than the other way round.

The decision was taken to create the Telehaus Wetter initiative. The targets for this were set by the Marburg-Biedenkopf office of women's affairs as follows:

• creating good jobs close to the home which provide some control over working time for the employees;
• maintaining people's roots in their rural area and strengthening regional economic structures by using the qualifications of local women and establishing modern service industries;
• bringing about the transfer of jobs from the city to the rural regions, in order to reach a balanced distribution of employment;
• in addition, meeting ecological targets (eg, the decrease of commuting to and from an overcrowded area);

Staffing and funding

The staff of Telehaus Wetter, 12 women, work in 3 different locations: 3 women work at a satellite office in Marburg-Cappel, another 3 women at a satellite office in Marburg-Stadtwald and 6 women work at the Teletraining Centre in Wetter itself, the central office of the project. The office in Marburg-Stadtwald is also used in evenings as a training-room.

Telehaus Wetter was established through financial support from a number of sponsors. The most important funder was the Ministerium für Frauen, Arbeit und Sozialordnung (ministry for women, work and social regulations) of the federal state of Hesse. Within the Hessenstrukturprogramm zur Erschließung innovativer Arbeitsfelder für Frauen im ländlichen Raum (structural program of the Hesse state for the opening of innovative working fields for women in rural regions) the government supported the Telehaus project over a two-year period from the beginning of 1994 until the end of 1995. Thus a solid financial basis was guaranteed.

Further assistance for particular projects came from different institutions: from the Amt für Regionalentwicklung, Landschaftspflege und Landwirtschaft (office for regional development, landscape cultivation and agriculture) which runs a special program (ländliche Regionalprogramme) for rural regional development ; from the Marburg-Biedenkopf local council which supported the project from the start with financial relief and with in-depth advice; and from the Ministry of Economy, which made the money available to establish the training centre.

With this firm financial foundation it was possible to open the Telehaus Wetter in March 1994, with at that time 13 employees. Since the beginning of 1996 Telehaus Wetter has ceased to receive public sector support, and (with the exception of a separate project for women with disabilities, Teleoffice) now must meet all its running costs from its activities.
 

Services offered by Telehaus Wetter

Telehaus Wetter provides services in three different spheres:

• office communication, this includes:
  advice on business use of the telephone (advice on telecommunications solutions; ISDN; e-mail; receiving and making telephone calls; information services), fax (receiving and sending faxes; hotline); preparation and handling of business correspondence (supply, reports, contracts, dictation and transcription, address management, mailing lists and address labels, laser printing);

• marketing service, this includes:
  mailing (analysis of target groups, address qualification, construction, maintenance and selection of databases, devising, writing and designing a mailshot, mail merging, folding, enveloping and transmission); telephone marketing ( telesales, support for mobile workers, management of terms, monitoring results); after sales (customer liaision, management of complaints, info-hotline);  

• so-called 'Telehaus Special', this includes:
  marketing (developing of new concepts, activation of business relations); public relations (drawing up booklets, sheets and flyers; copywriting, handling public relations); graphics (layouts, logos, Internet design); training (individual training at work, seminars about IT, marketing and communication); consultancy advice for the development of call centres; PC and laptop hire; copy service, etc.

At the end of 1995, a new two-year project Teleoffice was started. The main aim of Teleoffice is to integrate women with disabilities into the labour market. by making use of new technology. Currently the five members of Teleoffice, who are themselves disabled, are producing a handbook about female trainers and consultants Expertinnenhandbuch für Unternehmensberatung und Training". At the same time they are working for Telehaus Wetter's office communication, telephone marketing, graphic design and IT administration training programmes.

Teleoffice is supported by the European Union, the Hesse state government and Marburg-Biedenkopf district, with the staff salaries met by project funding. The European project partners are Skelmersdale College, UK; BEST-Training GmbH, Austria; Europäisches Bildungswerk in Brandenburg, Germany and CFUI TEC-TRAIN, Italy.

Regulations and contracts : working times

The employees of Telehaus Wetter are on different contracts, with some working full-time and some part-time. Those who work part-time usually work between 25 and 30 hours a week. There is a basic core work time between 9 am and 4 pm, when at least one member of staff is required at each of the three locations. Apart from this constraint, and subject to the agreement of colleagues, it is possible to arrange to work at times which are personally convenient. Only the members of the office communication service have to work at certain times.

The women working in Telehaus Wetter record their hours of work themselves.

Work organisation / communication

The employees of the three locations come together at meetings once or twice a week, as and when required, to discuss matters of common interest. Meetings are held in Telehaus Wetter. Otherwise, issues which crop up during the week are discussed and resolved by telephone.

Communication with customers/clients is handled by e-mail, fax, and telephone. The necessary technical equipment for e-mail exists only in Marburg-Cappel, so messages and file transmission is organised from here.

Legal aspects 

Telehaus Wetter is a registered association, Verein für Frauenbildung, Arbeit und Regionalentwicklung (VeFAR) e.V (association for women's education, work and regional development). The secretary of VeFAR is the commissioner for women's affairs in Marburg-Biedenkopf district council. All the staff members are employees of the association, although contract arrangements are different, however. Eight women have temporary contracts which are partly financed from the German Labour Administration ABM, a job-creation programme. The others have permanent contracts. Due to the amount of work being generated, it is hoped that the temporary contracts can be converted to permanent contracts once the grant-funding programmes are finished.

Technical aspects

The technical equipment of Telehaus Wetter consists of the following: ISDN telecommunication line, fax machine, PCs (486, Pentium), scanner, laser colour-printer, photocopier, laminator, cassette-recorders, laptop PCs.

The location at Marburg-Cappel is also supplied with equipment for e-mail and data transfer. In addition, there is one computer with Braille software available which is used by a blind woman working for the Teleoffice project, and one monitor with enhanced display features used by a partially sighted woman.